March 30, 2025 "This fellow welcomes sinners"
- pastoremily5
- Apr 1
- 6 min read
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
grace and peace to you
from the one who comes running with open arms. Amen
Today our lectionary gives us the parable of the prodigal son,
a story that we have all heard many times
along with just as many interpretations,
it is such a well-known story
that even those unfamiliar with the rest of scripture
know what “a prodigal son” is,
at least they think they do.
A prodigal son is one who leaves behind family and friends,
who is reckless with money and relationships,
someone who seeks their own pleasure
until all their resources are gone
and then when they hit rock bottom
they are the one that returns
to what they originally left behind
and remarkably they are welcomed back,
though when they are
they are hung with the label “prodigal”
no one will ever let them or others forget
that they left in the first place,
even back home they are still the one who left,
who didn’t deserve to be welcomed back
but who was anyway.
And when we think of it like that,
well it doesn’t sound so great,
it misses the grace that Jesus is trying to convey
in the image of the father rushing out to greet his son,
who celebrates his return with all the best things
because he loves him,
who tries to convey to his other son that love isn’t earned,
it just is.
We’ve heard this story before,
how might we hear it with fresh ears?
This time around I was struck by the introduction.
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable:
and in a neat bit of editing
our lectionary jumps right into the story of the two brothers,
but if you look closely
you’ll see that it has skipped some verses,
and in fact the parable of the son who comes back
is the third in a series of three parables
in response to the grumbling of the Scribes and Pharisees.
This first is the story about the shepherd with 100 sheep
who upon losing one leaves the other 99
and goes looking for that one until he finds it
and when he finds it he carries it back to the fold
and throws a celebration for the one that was lost.
And then Jesus tells the story of a woman who has ten pennies,
and upon discovering that she has lost one
cleans her house top to bottom
until she finds the coin
and upon finding the coin throws a celebration.
Two stories that fly in the face of human common sense math,
the math that says 99 sheep are more valuable than one sheep
so it is much more worth the shepherd’s time to focus on the 99.
Would all 100 be better,
of course
but if you have to make a choice choose the 99.
Or the math that says,
with the time spent cleaning the house
looking for that one penny
that woman could be off earning multiple pennies.
Is it great to lose a coin?
no
but in the grand scheme of things
it’s not worth it to go looking for it.
To the scribes and the pharisees
the tax collectors and sinners are the sheep and the coin,
they’ve already written them off as lost,
why are you wasting your time with them Jesus?
They’re not worth much in the grand scheme of things.
No,
Jesus says,
that’s not how God works,
God will look for the lost sheep,
the lost coin,
God will welcome the son
who to all appearances doesn’t deserve such a welcome
(and God will still care for the son who stayed home
and is grumpy about his brother’s return).
No amount of loss is acceptable to God,
God will always rejoice
when one who has been lost is found.
Author Emmy Kegler, in her writing on this chapter of Luke
remarks on the fact that often we approach these parables
with the sense that somehow it is the sheep and the coin’s fault for getting lost.
But in reality
wandering is part of being a sheep,
and they often have good reasons for wandering,
and the fact that they wander
is the whole reason for a shepherd in the first place.
A lost sheep is not so much the fault of the sheep
as it is the shepherd.
And coins don’t lose themselves,
for a coin to be lost
the one handling the coin
must be careless at worst or clumsy at best.
Kegler wonders too at everything that led up to the younger brother
demanding his inheritance and leaving home,
what was so intolerable about home and family
that he just had to get away?
a break in relationship as drastic as that
rarely comes about for one reason,
what was in the father’s mind
when he divided up the inheritance
(something he didn’t have to do)
and let his son go?
Kegler remarks “The trouble with this metaphor is that God is the shepherd and the woman, and if God was careless with sheep and coin that would mean God was careless with us. Metaphors, in Scripture and elsewhere, do not encompass the whole of reality. God has never been careless with us, but those who claim to speak for God have.” (One Coin Found, 5).
The pharisees and scribes were grumbling,
“this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,”
they have already written off those they have labeled sinners
as not worthy
they have let them wander off in the wilds,
roll under a dresser,
take what they can and leave
and in leaving have left their minds.
Not so with God,
the shepherd who leaves the 99
to go look for the one who has gotten stuck in a thorn bush
and needs help getting out,
not so with God,
the woman who scrubs her house from top to bottom
looking for that penny that has lost its shine
from all the dirt that has been piled on it.
Not so with God,
the father who searches the horizon
for the one who has left
and recognizes their own even at a great distance.
For those who feel like the one sheep,
the lost penny,
the exiled brother
one written off as not worth the trouble,
that is not the case with God,
God is searching for you
scanning the horizon,
running toward us with open arms.
You are loved.
And for those of us that identify with the older brother
and his self-righteous cries of “that’s not fair”
God says “no it’s not, and I love you too,
I love you so much that I sent my own Son,
for the sake of the self-centered and the self-righteous,
for the lost and the ones who did the losing,
and in my Son there is a new creation’
As Paul reminds the Corinthians
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view… if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation”
We are to see everyone as the new creation they are in Christ
and work toward reconciling those relationships that have become off kilter,
and yes that is incredibly difficult,
on our own impossible even,
but we are not on our own,
we are part of a community,
the body of Christ
together we care for those that are hard to love,
who have wandered,
who we have treated carelessly,
and thanks be to God for that
because we ourselves are hard to love,
we wander, feel pushed away, push others away
and yet God is there
searching the bushes,
cleaning under the shelves,
scanning the horizon,
and celebrating our return
creating us new in Christ each day. Amen
Kegler, Emmy. One Coin Found: How God's Love Stretches to the Margins. Fortress Press. Minneapolis, MN. 2019.
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